A Turkish developer's "Flightradar for trains", called Mapa de Trenes in Spain and Tågradar in Sweden

One person, two months, more than a dozen versions. Using public real-time data from European national railways, they built a map of live trains across Europe and gave each country a name locals would search for. It ran no visible ads and was never covered by the press, yet it broke into the travel Top Grossing charts in 12 European countries. Below: what it is, why now, where the money and users come from, who competes with it, and whether you should follow.

Nov 1 Spain travel Top Grossing

On Nov 1, 2026, an app called "Train Radar: Mapa de Trenes" ranked #18 in the Spain App Store travel Top Grossing chart. The same day it was #25 in Sweden's travel Top Grossing chart under the name "Train Radar: Tågradar", and #48 in Germany as "Train Radar: Zugradar". In the Netherlands it's "Trein Volgen", and in France "Suivi des Trains".

It's all the same app, built by Turkish developer Alihan Aktay, whose day job is CTO at Turkish mobile dev company Mobillium. The iOS version launched in Sep 9 and had reached 1.15.0 by Nov 6. The Android version only came in Oct 25. As of Nov 5, Google Play showed 830 cumulative installs, and in Poland it peaked at #73 in the Maps & Navigation free chart.

In one line: open it and you get a dark map of Europe, with thousands of points of light gliding along the rails. Each point is a train currently running. Tap one to see its route, next stop, platform, and how late it is. The homepage of trainradar.co shows live "9,440 trains are moving right now" (trainradar.co, 11-06).

Why now: people were already primed for it

"Flightradar for trains" is not a new idea, and Reddit has people asking for it every year. What changed was summer 2026:

• In July, UK ticketing platform Trainline launched live train tracking. A TikTok promoting it got 5.6M views (@trainlineuk, 07-19).
• From late August to early September, a web-based live train map called TrainTracker24 was covered by Euronews (08-27), 20minutes (08-30), and Le Figaro (09-01).

These two events turned "seeing where trains are, live" into something ordinary people searched for. Train Radar launched in September and caught that wave of searches. It wasn't first and isn't the biggest, but the timing lined up.

How one person built a Europe-wide map: the data is free

Many European national railways publish live operating data. Train Radar's data sources page lists about 20 feeds: UK National Rail / Network Rail, German DB and DELFI, Switzerland, Austria's ÖBB, the Dutch NS, France's SNCF, Spain's Renfe, Finland's Fintraffic, Norway's Entur, Poland's PKP PLK, Denmark, Ireland, and Luxembourg.

Each national official app (for example, DB Navigator, with 53M installs on Android) only covers its own trains. Trainline only tracks the trip you bought a ticket for. Building one cross-border map has no incentive for the official operators, but a single person can stitch it together.

Where users come from: one local name per country

The confirmed main channel is store search. In each country's App Store it uses a title in the local language: Germans search "Zugradar", Swedes search "Tågradar", Spaniards search "mapa de trenes", and they find an app that looks like a local product. The app supports 11 languages, and its website has 10 language versions.

The travel Top Grossing chart has a low bar in small markets. In markets like Norway, Sweden, and Austria, a few subscriptions a day can reach the top 50 (inferred). So "charting in 12 countries" means people are paying, not that it's making big money. Across all European App Stores the app has about 60 ratings (iTunes, 11-06), which is still a small scale.

A few other signals:

• Share link: 1.15.0's release notes say that when you share a ride, the link preview now shows that ride's location on the map and nearby cars. It's built for forwarding into group chats.
• Website: Store links carry source parameters, suggesting the developer tracks how many installs come from the website.
• Ads: Nothing found in the Meta or TikTok ad libraries. Each country's ranking spiked for a few days and then fell back, with peak dates differing by country (Norway 10-28, Germany 10-31, Spain and Sweden 11-01, Austria 11-04), closely following two releases, 10-30 and 10-31. This could be country-by-country Apple Search Ads, or new versions re-indexing keywords. Can't tell which (unverified).
• Social and media: None. The developer's X account is a personal Turkish-language account that never mentions the app, and no media outlet has written about it.

Where the money comes from: free to view, subscriptions sell "dependence"

The map, each train's route and timetable, platforms, cancellations, and station departure boards are all free. Pro is a monthly or annual subscription (annual comes with a trial), selling what you only need when you're about to catch a train: live delays and estimated arrival, delay reasons, unlimited alerts, Live Activities on the lock screen and Dynamic Island, freight trains, and historical playback. On Google Play, in-app purchases are priced at $3.39–21.99.

The website has a smart line: "Cancellations and platform changes are always free, and safety information is never behind a paywall." That line heads off a whole category of bad reviews.

What users say, from a few App Store reviews:

• Germany, 5 stars (10-01): "Beautifully designed, and it's really convenient to use."
• Germany, 4 stars (10-21): "Everything is as expected… but I can't see my own position, so it's hard to know where I am." (Later versions added location.)
• Germany, 2-star (10-09): "Missing a train. e.g. the daily ICE 502 doesn't show up in search."
• Sweden, 1 stars (10-27): "I can't see freight trains, even though I paid for them." The Swedish store's average is only 1.7 (3 ratings).

Incomplete coverage and an unreliable freight feature are the usual problems with this kind of "stitched-together data" product.

Who it's competing with

It's crowded.

Since 2026 July to November, a dozen-plus copycat apps have appeared across Europe. Train Radar's edge is one map for all of Europe, a clean native iOS experience, and local names in every country. But none of that is hard to copy: the data is public, and anyone can pick a name.

How well known is it?

The app itself is barely known: no press, no X, no Reddit threads, no public revenue. Yet its category has already been covered by major media and plenty of others followed at the same time. Spain's Raíltrack launched in Nov 2, and a French trainradar.fr with the same name opened its beta in Oct 30.

If it were you

Verdict: the European train slot is already crowded, so don't squeeze in. What's worth keeping is the playbook. Apply it to another category or region. It took off partly on hype, and partly because "one app, a local name per country" captured search. You can absolutely take that second half.

Who it suits: indie devs who can build native iOS, are willing to work through open government data, and can localize one app into a dozen-plus languages.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone aiming for big traffic or ad revenue. A tool like this tops out at a few subscriptions from small-country charts, collected one country at a time.

How to do it:

• Look for categories with open real-time data but no good cross-country or cross-city map: ferries, intercity buses, city transit, bike share, trams (my inference: many European cities and operators publish live data, but no one has stitched it together).
• Or take trains somewhere Train Radar doesn't cover: Japan, Korea, India, Australia. First check whether the local open real-time feeds exist.
• Copy its payment structure: free to view, subscription for delays, alerts and lock screen widgets, with safety info stated as always free.
• Do the parts it does badly. Missing trains and unreliable freight data are where its bad reviews come from. Even if you cover just one country, complete coverage there can beat it.

How to get users: no ads. In each country's App Store, use the exact search term locals type as the title and subtitle (Zugradar, Tågradar and so on). Start with small, low-competition travel or navigation charts (Nordics, Austria, Switzerland). Add a "share this trip" link so people send it to group chats. Validate that people pay on iOS first, then add Android.

When it's too late: the European train category window has largely closed, since too many people entered between 7 and November. Going after another category or region has no deadline, but a "X version of Flightradar" gets copied within weeks of a single major media mention, as happened here. Move before that happens.

Signs you've misread it: if Train Radar's top-grossing rank keeps sliding and never returns to the top 50, the earlier spikes were driven by releases or ad buys rather than steady subscriptions, and the money is thinner than it looks. If a national railway starts restricting commercial use of its open data (National Rail in the UK or PKP in Poland could), the "zero-cost data" premise is gone.